Precisely.
James, can you clarify the difference between the ‘potential to be perceived’ and the ‘potential to be indirectly perceived’?
What do you mean by ‘indirect perception’?
‘To have an affect’ makes sense to me, but I don’t understand how that means ‘the potential to be indirectly perceived’. How does that follow from ‘to have an affect’?
If you agree with me, shouldn’t you be bringing the whole faculty of perception out of the matter?
I think the point he was making with the claim “to exist is to occupy a point in ‘space-time’” is that, things exist in ‘space-time’, and whether or not we can pinpoint it makes no difference to its existence within those parameters.
Is ‘space-time’ reality or an organism’s simulation, a part of reality?
Anywho, the claim is basically saying, “everything exists within the all” - what’s the point of these discussions? Sure, I can play ball, but what value has it?
Somebody postulates that there is such thing as the ‘all’ (how easy is this to do? - a very broad generalization that encompasses everything and understands nothing) and simply says, everything that is within it, exists!
What do we learn?
Who cares if one thing or the other is ‘being perceived’?
What matters is how one thing or the other, or a group of things, is being perceived and what effects that has or can have.
What exists is ‘affecting’ what else is existing.
What exists must affect what else is existing, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t exist.
Continuous interactivity or bust.
That’s what I got from James saying ‘exist is to have an affect’ . . . but what is this ‘indirect perception’ and how it is it related? I don’t know.
I presume indirect perception accounts for the tree falling in the middle of the desert when no living organism is perceiving it directly.
Which would still make it about perception at the end.
Me, I think the wind carries the dust created by the fallen tree regardless of whether this reaches in some way a perceiving organism or not.
If it has absolutely no affect upon anything whatsoever, it does not exist … otherwise it does. And if it does, it has the potential to be indirectly perceived.
It makes sense.
My definition of the concept of existence is practical and epistemological rather than theoretical and ontological. What I am doing is I am describing how observers determine whether something exists or not. You will agree that in the absence of observations that support the claim we cannot say that a thing exists. It may exist, but in the absence of evidence, it is nothing more than hypothetical thinking on our part.
In practical terms, an object is said to exist if past observations suggest that taking the necessary steps to observe it will yield a positive outcome in the sense that the expected object will be observed. Similarly, an object is said not to exist if past observations suggest that taking the necessary steps to observe it will yield a negative outcome in the sense that the expected object will not be observed.
In both cases, we’re dealing with observation-dependent concepts. Existence and non-existence refer to observations. Either you observe the expected, in which case it exists, or you do not, in which case it does not exist.
Observation-independent concepts have nothing to do with reality and everything to do with fantasy.
Your concept of existence, for example, is observation-independent (= ontological = metaphysical = hypothetical.)
This is why I asked Prismatic to define what it means for an object to “exist out there”. Because I knew that his concept of objectivity is observation-independent, and thus, practically meaningless.
Note that observation dependence is not the same as subjectivity.
Your criticism can only apply to observation-independent concepts of existence. It does not, and it cannot, apply to my concept because my concept is observation-dependent.
Existence of an object is a certainty derived from past observations that the object will be observed as expected if necessary steps are taken.
This does not mean that whether something exists or not is determined by whether there is anyone out there that can observe it or not. This may be the case, if there is a connection between observers appearing/disappearing and things existing/not-existing, but my definition does not imply it. It neither means that the object will be observed as expected if there are people who are certain that it will.
It simply means that the concept of existence is created by observers to describe certain types of observations of external reality.
Existence is not a metaphysical state that is independent from the observers. (That would be observation-independent concept of existence.)
External phenomena, metaphysically speaking, neither exist nor not-exist. Why? Because it’s a meaningless term.
The above is not the definition of existence. The real definition is: existence is observation. That which is observed exists.
This definition is hard to digest because it appears to imply that what is unobserved does not exist. This is true, the unobserved does not exist, but only in the sense that it is not observed.
The trick is that non-existence is not the opposite of existence.
Non-existence is a lack of correspondence between the expected observation and the actual observation.
In order to know that something is non-existent, one must observe it in order to be able to compare the expected observation with the actual observation.
The unobserved can neither exist nor not-exist.
What it can do, however, is it can probably exist or not-exist.
The quoted is definition of probable existence. This means that if we were to observe the probably existing unobserved that we would probably observe what we expected to observe.
Your definition is better than the other, but all are still kindergarten children one-upping each other in the school-yard.
To add, it cannot be p and not-p in the same sense and at the same time.
Thus it can be
relative [independent object], i.e. an object perceived as independent within relative conditions.
You are still groping around in philosophical darkness.
Note I have explained ‘exist out there’ in an absolute independent state as;
As agreed by surreptitious57, this definition is also agreed by the whole philosophical community as the realists’ definition.
While I understand the above definition, I [anti-realist] do not agree objects exist absolutely independently out there.
I agree with ‘objects exist interdependently and intersubjectively as an emergence’.
I suggest you don’t bother with me at present but learn from your mis-perceptions or rather misconceptions from others.
So before anyone was around to observe, the Earth didn’t exist?
And if no one sees me shoot you in the back of your head, then it didn’t happen?
Lucid. I understand & agree.
No.
Before anyone was around to observe, there was noone to calculate whether the Earth exists or does not exist.
And if no one sees you shoot me in the back of my head, then no one saw you shoot me in the back of my head. Nonetheless, there can be people who can prove that you did in fact shoot me in the back of my head.
The discussion has been about what exists, not what can be proven to exist. Earlier you stated that something can be said to exist as long as it has the potential to be observed. I can agree with that (as long as you don’t constrain it to direct observation). But then you stated:
And that is a different concept implying that if something is not observed, it does not exist … end of story … no concern of potential to be observed. So even if someone could eventually prove that something happened, by that definition, it still didn’t happen because it wasn’t observed.
The discussion has been about the meaning of the word existence. To know what the meaning of the word existence is, we need to look at the manner in which we determine whether something exists or not.
On the other hand, if you want to know “what [probably] exists”, then all you have to do is to infer it from your past observations. In other words, what [probably] exists is that which has a proof of existence.
In epistemological terms, non-existence is not the opposite of existence.
This is because existence refers to an observation whereas non-existence refers to a relation - a negative relation – between an expected observation and an actual observation.
The opposite of non-existence, then, is not existence, but the opposite relation – the positive relation – between an expected observation and an actual observation.
Existence does not have an opposite.
Non-observation is not non-existence.
That which is not existence cannot be non-existence. Only a form of existence can be non-existence.
Non-observation cannot be existence, but an unobserved – which really is a hypothetical – can be a probable existence.
I’ll bump this in the event that AutSider returns to the discussion…
Yes, but you never really seem willing to examine and to explore the extent to which “the foundation of objectivism” is relevant when different folks embracing conflicting value judgments insist that behaving in different/conflicting ways is more conducive to promoting survival.
When, in other words, you are not cutting off your own head but are advocating the right of a pregnant woman to shred the life of her unborn baby. Or are advocating the right of the state to execute prisoners. Or are advocating the right of a nation to pursue a particular war by engaging particular drone strikes. Or are advocating the right of rational men and women to consume the flesh of animals.
Clearly, regarding hundreds of issues that we are all familiar with, different folks insist that behaving in different ways best promotes the survival of any particular community.
Then what? That we all go to KT and choose to be in sync with whatever Satyr argues regarding issues like this…and gender roles and race and everything else?
Like you do?
Here you merely make the assumption that the manner in which you construe living “naturally” is in sync with…with what? With the manner in which all rational men and women are obligated to think and feel and behave?
Or, as those objectivists who eschew “universal truths” here seem to suggest, each individual is permitted his or her own rendition of it.
But then what happens when these renditions come into conflict? How are the “rules of behaviors” or “the laws of the land” not then merely political prejudices?
Indeed, regarding even a single issue, note where you have effectively dealt with the manner in which I construe these conflicts as embodiments of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
[/quote]
That is certainly not how most people use the term “existence”. People believe that the center of the Earth exists even though it has never been observed by anyone, much less them. They believe that the far side of the Moon exists, even without observation. They believe that germs and atoms exist, even without their own observation. People do not use the word “observation” as a synonym for “existence”.
But they do use it to mean that whatever “exists” has the potential to affect something if not already doing so.
That would be “anti-existence”. And you are right, such is an oxymoron.
Then existence cannot be observation.